Today will be spent trying to recover from the loss of data experienced here at theCL. You'd think I'd learn ... back-up, back-up, BACK-UP!
So before I head into the abyss of coding, attempting to rebuild the categories and other various lost stuff, I'd like to bring to your attention, 4 good reads from across the fruited internet.
1. With the federal budget deficit at $1.2 trillion (crazy, isn't it?), President-elect Barack Obama has promised:
"We are committed to changing the way our government in Washington does business so that we're no longer squandering billions of tax dollars on programs that have outlived their usefulness or exist solely because of the power of a lobbyist or an interest group... Even in good times, Washington can't afford to continue these bad practices. In bad times, it's absolutely imperative that Washington stop them and restore confidence that our government is on the side of taxpayers and everyday Americans."
The (not-so) funny thing is ... Obama plans to spend more than another $1 trillion in money the government doesn't have!
Can someone say ... "full of sh!t"?
2. Capitalism? Free markets? We're repeatedly told that that's what's to blame, so I ask again, where is this alleged "unfettered" capitalism? From the Freedom Factory, Lawyers and the New Capitalism:
In a free system, employees freely contract with their employers, coming to terms of mutual agreement for compensation. In America's new system, when employees disagree about wages, overtime, time off, or any kind of working condition, lawyers come to the rescue!
Complaints included "forcing employees to work unpaid off the clock, erasing hours from time cards and preventing workers from taking lunch and other breaks that were promised by the company or guaranteed by state laws."
The perversion is the use of the word "force" in the list of complaints. America is not a slave or feudal based society, yet. At any point at which a worker feels exploited he can walk away from the job. Unless there is a long-term contract whose terms an employer breaches, there is no use of force or ethical recourse to forcing a company to pay you more than they'd like.
Apparently, however, there is legal precedent to do so, but this is not Capitalism. This is plunder. Class action lawsuits drain more than $246 billion from the economy every year, not including indirect costs such as effects of layoffs and bankruptcies, and lost opportunity costs.
And if you think justice is being served by this nonsense, just take a look at compensation structures ...
3. Mike Hewitt from Dollar Daze, has written an excellent history lesson on paper money titled, The Fate of Paper Money.
I'll let you read the whole thing yourself, but I'd like to offer a quick point regarding one of his graphics.
One of the reasons the Federal Reserve just had to be (I tell ya ...) created, was to protect the value of the dollar.
Taking a look at the above chart, since it's creation in 1913, how has the Fed done in respect to protecting the dollar?
And the answer is ... drum-roll please ... they've been complete failures!
"Instead of funding issues of paper on the hypothecation of specific redeeming taxes (the only method of anticipating, in a time of war, the resources of times of peace, tested by the experience of nations), we are trusting to tricks of jugglers on the cards, to the illusions of banking schemes for the resources of the war, and for the cure of colic to inflations of more wind."
--Thomas Jefferson to M. Correa de Serra, 1814. ME 14:224
But hey ... why listen to a nobody like Thomas Jefferson, when we now have the financial "brilliance" of Barney Frank, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and that clown Paul Krugman?
4. H/T to Save the GOP for directing us to this excellent post from Paul Ibrahim, who shares a letter his friend sent to the Republican National Committee! Read the whole thing here.
Dear RNC letter Opener,
As a deep red conservative, I will once again refrain from giving the RNC or any of its Republican sister agencies any money for 2009. The atrocious inability of the Republican Party's leadership, if I may stretch a word, to whip its members into standing firm against the 700 billion dollar bailout is proof that for at least the 9th year in a row, it deserves no money from me or any other proponent of small government. As usual, the G.O.P. talks a good game of fiscal responsibility but succeeds in being the party only of slower government growth. Of managed illegal immigration. Of good-judges-when-convenient. No sir, once again The Club for Growth will be getting the money that might have gone to you, if only you had courageously stuck to the principles which over 50% of this nation will vote for repeatedly, if given the chance.
Even your literature shows you don't get it ...
